ImportError: Using load_in_8bit=True requires Accelerate: pip install accelerate and the latest version of bitsandbytes pip install -i https://test.pypi.org/simple/ bitsandbytes or pip install bitsandbytes` when in reality it's a torch issue

[dataf3l]

bitsandbytes reports this error:

(venv) ➜  image-captioning-v2 python captionit3.py
True
False
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/b/study/ml/image-captioning-v2/captionit3.py", line 14, in <module>
    model = Blip2ForConditionalGeneration.from_pretrained("Salesforce/blip2-opt-6.7b-coco", device_map='auto', quantization_config=nf4_config)
            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/b/study/ml/image-captioning-v2/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/transformers/modeling_utils.py", line 2616, in from_pretrained
    raise ImportError(
ImportError: Using `load_in_8bit=True` requires Accelerate: `pip install accelerate` and the latest version of bitsandbytes `pip install -i https://test.pypi.org/simple/ bitsandbytes` or pip install bitsandbytes`

however, the error is innacurate, because the issue is that the function:

def is_bitsandbytes_available():
    if not is_torch_available():
        return False

    # bitsandbytes throws an error if cuda is not available
    # let's avoid that by adding a simple check
    import torch

    return _bitsandbytes_available and torch.cuda.is_available()

and if somebody accidentally uninstall torch, this happens.
So maybe one should improve the error message.
and maybe sending a message here to the user complaining about "unable to import torch" would be useful, who knows

tell your friends! :)

[Its3rr0rsWRLD]

Are you on MacOS? Had the same issue on it, swapped to windows (remote ssh) and searching for a different issue lol

[oushu1zhangxiangxuan1]

I got the same ERROR

[SoyGema]

Are you on MacOS? Had the same issue on it, swapped to windows (remote ssh) and searching for a different issue lol

Yes. Same issue on MacOS

[effortprogrammer]

same issue... is there any updates?

[pechaut78]

same issue

[RamsesCamas]

Same issue

[pechaut78]

Well as said above, the error is not that the lib is not properly installed: the error message is misleading.
The issue is that it is not implemented on Apple Silicon (mps)
So, bitsandbytes can not be used and code should be adapted ! sigh

Please see:

#485

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. If you think this still needs to be addressed please comment on this thread.

[TimDettmers]

This is a great catch. Can you please submit this to the transformers github repo? This is only indirectly a bitsandbytes issue.

[Titus-von-Koeller]

To me it's not entirely clear where Mac comes into play and how we would best warn that Mac is not supported.

@pechaut78 how did you deduce that it must be Mac related? And why does the code get triggered that is throwing the traceback?

[younesbelkada]

Hi - the core issue is that currently in transformers is_bitsandbytes_available() silently returns False if you don't have a CUDA device, i.e. if torch.cuda.is_available(): https://github.com/huggingface/transformers/blob/cd2eb8cb2b40482ae432d97e65c5e2fa952a4f8f/src/transformers/utils/import_utils.py#L623
This is not ideal as we should display a more informative warning instead - @Titus-von-Koeller would be happy to open a quick PR on transformers to add a logger.info if torch.cuda.is_available() is False to clearly state to users that is_bitsandbytes_available() will silently be set to False ? Otherwise happy to do it as well